


litany of dreams

by kyrilu



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dreamsharing, M/M, Magical Realism, One-Sided Relationship, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:04:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3103196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could always bleed into dreams. He doesn’t know how it started, when it started, but it’s not very hard to pull at the underpinnings of unconsciousness and place himself there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	litany of dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beaufort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beaufort/gifts).



> This turned out to be...something really experimental and this fic became kinda surreal, and then the crossover element snuck in? I don't know. :/ 
> 
> (Quick side note: also, there's hinted Hannibal/Will.)

Will Graham’s dreams are cool and blue. He puts his sadness into a river, the melancholy outstretched along the water and the banks. He puts his fear and his darkness into the forest surrounding the river - there’s something whispering in the trees, amongst the shadows. Matthew bleeds into Graham’s unconsciousness, quietly, an unseen observer pressed against a looming tree.

Graham is standing in the river, wading through it. His hands make ripples beside him, and he has his eyes on the forest.

Matthew likes it here. Outside the dream, he’s beside Graham’s cell. Slumped in a corner where the cameras can’t see him, sleeping. But inside the dream, he has his head tipped back, watching as the dim moonlight plays over Graham’s throat.

 

* * *

 

(He could always bleed into dreams. He doesn’t know how it started, when it started, but it’s not very hard to pull at the underpinnings of unconsciousness and place himself there. Maybe it’s part of whatever that made him who he is - he can see the deeper things, the darker things, and all it does is make him _hungry_. For example: there was someone, once, who gave him dreams of a dragon and a full moon, and he wakes up knowing the chill of gunmetal between his fingertips and the word _becoming_ on the tip of his tongue.)

 

* * *

 

He’s never thought of himself as anyone’s champion - he’s just a silent creature who blends into the background and flits through the dreams of those adjacent to him as if it’s as easy as breathing - but somehow, Will Graham is his exception. Maybe it’s because of Graham’s river. Maybe it’s because of the TattleCrime headlines, christening Graham as something new and terrible. Maybe it’s because Graham has living dreams that are as vivid as Matthew’s slumbering ones: blood, death, and the patterns strewn between them.

He tells Graham about birds and understanding. He promises vengeance through the bars: _just say the words._

So he’s Will Graham’s champion.

He stares at Hannibal Lecter dead in the eye and wonders what the Chesapeake Ripper’s dreams are like.

But he’s fucked it up. He falls.

 

* * *

 

(He thinks: I have died dreaming, before. It’s not the same as this. _This_ feels like he’s waist deep in Graham’s river, limbs trying to grasp for the surface and his throat devoid of oxygen.)

 

* * *

 

There’s nothing but pain, for awhile. He drifts in and out of other people’s dreams and his own dreams, pieces of narratives that don’t fit or flow together. There’s a train ride to somewhere far away, green grass streaming past the window and the wind on his cheeks. (No, this isn’t his head; it’s another hospital patient’s.) There’s a familiar church - prayers blurring together in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. (Yes, he thinks, this is _mine._ ) There’s a morgue, getting lost amongst putrid bodies, reciting the names under his breath. (No, this is just a doctor napping in the on-call room; that’s the doctor who has been monitoring the state of Matthew’s bullet wound.) There’s the impression of Will Graham’s mouth on his, his hand on his hand, and they’re beside the river, sunlight warming the air. (Yes, this is _mine_ , but it isn’t--)

He finds himself reaching for Graham’s dreams. He can’t find him.

 

* * *

 

He’s in a cell in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, with nothing but the dreams of mad around him. Which should be okay - he’s mad himself, and he’s dreamt in BSHCI before. But the river’s gone - he used to like closing his eyes and falling back into it whenever Graham did, a shared lucid dream.

 

* * *

 

Then, one night, he finds the river. Or, rather, he finds an ocean, smelling sharply of brine. He’s on the shore, his feet on the sand, and there’s a sailboat waiting for him. A lantern is perched on the boat, a dim yellow-orange glimmer, the only light for miles. The moon in the sky is a new one.

When he climbs into the boat it touches off, sailing smoothly into the dark velvet of the night.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t usually work like this. It never works like this. But he knows all rivers lead into the ocean eventually, and he lets the ocean waves carry him. He can taste salt on his tongue; he can feel the breeze biting his skin.

He feels like he’s sailing on a river of mythologies. Styx, or Lethe, or Slidr, or Vimur, at the end or beginning of worlds.

 

* * *

 

The boat glides into Graham’s river. Graham isn’t standing in the water, this time - he’s standing on moss-covered rocks at the edge of the forest. He is not wearing his customary fishing jacket, but a dark thick coat, a scarf at his throat. His usually wild hair is combed back.

Matthew gets out of the boat; it pauses, mid-current, ready to resume its journey when he’s ready. He says, “What are you looking for, Mr. Graham? In the forest.”

Graham turns toward him, a surprised flash of his eyes. “Matthew.”

“That’s me,” Matthew says, with a wry smile. “You clean up nicely, Mr. Graham. I see freedom has been treating you well.”

Graham’s fingers go to the collar of his coat. “Not exactly,” he says. Then he says abruptly, “I lost this coat. But this--this is a dream, I think.”

“What else could it be?” Matthew says, and looks up at the night sky, feeling more free than he’s ever felt before. He thinks of his earlier dreams: _his mouth on Graham’s mouth, his hand on Graham’s hand._ He can still taste the salt on his lips. He says again, “What are you looking for?”

Graham’s gaze returns to the forest. “The man you tried to hang. He’s there, somewhere.”

Matthew sees the sudden burst of memory: _lying in blood, choking and gasping._ Will Graham played his game, Hannibal Lecter played his, and it feels like Matthew sauntered into the middle of the story as a bystander. He almost wants to laugh.

“You went into the forest yourself,” Matthew says, slowly. The fear and the darkness. “How was it like?”

“I brought back something,” Graham says, and he unfurls his fingers, showing a raven feather on his palm.

Matthew doesn’t say anything in reply. They’re both silent, standing and staring at the forest, and then Matthew takes the feather from Graham’s palm. Their fingers brush. Graham doesn’t flinch at the contact; he just watches as Matthew twirls the feather’s bristles between his fingertips idly.

Matthew says, “I can find him.”

Graham pauses. He says, “You’re the caged bird this time, Matthew. You couldn’t get him at that noose, as much as I couldn’t get him myself.”

Matthew shrugs. “I can try.”

He closes his hand around the feather in his palm. He wants to ask Graham to come with him, but he doesn’t. He wants to ask Graham to touch him - even if it’s little, something insignificant - but he doesn’t ask him that, either.

 

* * *

 

He’s sailing on the sea again. The moon has changed, oddly; it’s filled from new to full. When Matthew looks at the ocean, it’s not murky as it was on his previous voyage but clear. Like crystalline glass. When he holds his palm out to the water, showing it the feather, the silhouette of a bird flickers on the ocean’s surface.

He wants to memorize this: the ocean spray on his skin, the image of the bird on the water. The echo of the fleeting touch of Graham’s hand is still lingering on his skin. He’s never dreamt like this before.

 

* * *

 

The boat bobs against a small ornate bridge stretched across a river. The bridge is connected to a large, shimmering palace - it’s the right place, Matthew thinks. It feels like it’s the right place.

He clambers onto the bridge and takes in his surroundings. The river here is long, bending around the palace and farther still, and there’s rocks neatly running around it. Fishes are darting below the surface; rows and rows of flowers are bright on the banks; and there’s a veranda protruding from the palace, overlooking the scene. It’s all illuminated in the moonlight - incandescent and brilliant.

He sees a figure sitting on a velvet armchair on the veranda, and goes to join him.

“Dr. Lecter,” he says, in greeting.

“Will Graham’s orderly,” Lecter says, his face unfathomable. “Mr. Brown.”

There are two empty armchairs beside him. Matthew sinks into one of them, and looks at the front of the palace again: the river, the bridge, the flower, the fishes, the rocks. He says to Lecter, “I heard you were on the run.”

“And you would be right,” Lecter says. He reaches at the small table beside him, producing a wine bottle and a glass. Matthew’s eyes catches the label at the side - _Toscana_. “Would you like a drink, Mr. Brown?”

“No, thank you,” Matthew says. He wants a clear head; he doesn’t want Lecter’s wine, even if this is a dream. He says, “You made this place for him, didn’t you?”

He remembers Graham’s memory and adds, “And for that girl, too. The Minnesota Shrike’s daughter.”

Lecter doesn’t look up at first; he pours himself a glass of wine. He takes a sip and says, slowly, “Yes. In my waking dreams, this place is not as sentimental as this. But here, the river fills with fish and the flowers bloom.”

“I wish I could make something like this for him,” Matthew says, quietly. “I made an ocean to find him.”

Lecter tips his head forward, a nod. “You smell like the sea, Mr. Brown. How is he?”

“Healing, I suppose,” Matthew says. “Looking into that dark forest of his.”

Matthew tilts his head to peer at the sky above the palace - Lecter puts bright stars in his skies; Graham puts dimmer ones - and he thinks that he doesn’t want to hurt Hannibal Lecter. This isn’t about finishing what he started earlier; it doesn’t feel _right_ to interfere with burning, righteous violence. He just wants to disappear. To melt into the fabric of these narratives - not just Lecter’s, not just Graham’s, but everyone’s, an ocean of dreams upon dreams.

He thinks: I have died dreaming, before. I have never felt like I belonged. He’s needed elsewhere, for something else. This was never about being anyone’s champion.

He tells Lecter, “You remind me of someone.”

“Oh?”

“There’s someone like you in the darkest of dreams. Lurking at the edges.” Matthew doesn’t know how to articulate it. “But--you’ll do.”

He turns the feather over in his palm. It’s transformed into a knife. Matthew says, “I gave you scars, when I cut you. You can return the favor.”

Lecter takes the knife. It glints in the light of the stars. “Why are you asking me to do this?”

“I don’t know,” Matthew says. “I know you’ll be good at it.”

He holds himself out, like he did before Lecter at the noose. He looks at the boat, and he looks at the stars, and he looks at the river.

He doesn’t see the blade when it cuts into skin, but he feels the sting of it. He feels smaller. The tattoos on his stomach pull at him, stretch, and burst out into wings, and he becomes a bird -- _a raven_ \-- when the knife’s trajectory has been carved out. He feels the feathers closing around his body, and he loses himself to the stars.

 

* * *

 

Will Graham hears a message in his dreams, a crackled bird-whisper: _Florence._ He wakes and remembers it, but nothing else.

 

* * *

 

 (“There used to be a black raven named Matthew, before,” says the ghost-like man - he’s bright, bright white - as he walks the Dreaming.

“It must be a lucky name,” Matthew says, perched on his shoulder. “Nice to meet you, Daniel.”

“Likewise.”)

**Author's Note:**

> Crossover explanation: Neil Gaiman's The Sandman features anthropomorphic personifications of certain concepts. One of them - Dream (who personifies exactly what his name is; he's later succeeded by Daniel) - is always accompanied by a messenger raven.
> 
> Hannibal reminds Matthew of the Corinthian, who is a dream entity constructed to reflect humanity's dark side and manifest in their nightmares. The original incarnation of him goes awry as a serial killer in the waking world, although he's later remade to continue haunting nightmares.
> 
> Hopefully this makes sense. /o\


End file.
